More by David Baker

Yesterday a little girl got slapped to death by her daddy,
out of work, alcoholic, and estranged two towns down river.
America, it's hard to get your attention politely.
America, the beautiful night is about to blow up
and the cop who brought the man down with a shot to the chops
is shaking hands, dribbling chaw across his sweaty shirt,
and pointing cars across the courthouse grass to park.
It's the Big One one more time, July the 4th,
our country's perfect holiday, so direct a metaphor for war,
we shoot off bombs, launch rockets from Drano cans,
spray the streets and neighbors' yards with the machine-gun crack
of fireworks, with rebel yells and beer. In short, we celebrate.
It's hard to believe. But so help the soul of Thomas Paine,
the entire county must be here--the acned faces of neglect,
the halter-tops and ties, the bellies, badges, beehives,
jacked-up cowboy boots, yes, the back-up singers of democracy
all gathered to brighten in unambiguous delight
when we attack the calm and pointless sky. With terrifying vigor
the whistle-stop across the river will lob its smaller arsenal
halfway back again. Some may be moved to tears.
We'll clean up fast, drive home slow, and tomorrow
get back to work, those of us with jobs, convicting the others
in the back rooms of our courts and malls--yet what
will be left of that one poor child, veteran of no war
but her family's own? The comfort of a welfare plot,
a stalk of wilting prayers? Our fathers' dreams come true as
nightmare.
So the first bomb blasts and echoes through the streets and shrubs:
red, white, and blue sparks shower down, a plague
of patriotic bugs. Our thousand eyeballs burn aglow like punks.
America, I'd swear I don't believe in you, but here I am,
and here you are, and here we stand again, agape.

The moon tonight is
the cup of a
scar. I hate the moon.
I hate—more—that scar. My love waited
one day, then half
the next. One
cyst drained of fluid that looked,
she said, like icing for
a cake. Red-
laced, she said, gold,
tan, thick, rich. Kind of
beautiful.
One cyst
was not a cyst. One
—small one, hard, its edges jagged—
like a snow ball.
This one scared
the house on-
cologist into
lab work: stat.
Once the snow melts the birds
will be back.
Once
many men were masked
in front of their
families. Were gunned down
to shallow graves, together, there.
Basra. Kaechon. East
St. Louis, Illinois. Nowhere
we don’t know about
and nothing yet is done.
This is what we watch while
we wait.
Twelve little cysts
of snow in the red-
bud. I watched each one, having
counted, once more, and then one
more time, as
the news reports reported
and the cold early
northern wind shook
out there the bare, still-budded small
bush. Balls of crust shuddered
in the bush.
Birds will be
back as
though nothing has happened.
I am here to report that
nothing happened. Except
the oncologist said, then,
benign.
But now I hate
the moon. Hate the scar,
though it shines
on her breast
like the moon at my lips.

1.
Such pleasure one needs to make for oneself.
She has snipped the paltry forsythia
to force the bloom, has cut each stem on
the slant and sprinkled brown sugar in a vase,
so the wintered reeds will take their water.
It hurts her to do this but she does it.
When are we most ourselves, and when the least?
Last night, the man in the recessed doorway,
homeless or searching for something, or sought—
all he needed was one hand and quiet.
The city around him was one small room.
He leaned into the dark portal, gray
shade in a door, a shadow of himself.
His eyes were closed. His rhythm became him.
So we have shut our eyes, as dead or as
other, and held the thought of another
whose pleasure is need, face over a face ...
2.
It hurts her to use her hands, to hold
a cup or bud or touch a thing. The doctors
have turned her burning hands in their hands.
The tests have shown a problem, but no cause,
a neuropathology of mere touch.
We have all made love in the dark, small room
of such need, without shame, to our comfort,
our compulsion. I know I have. She has.
We have held or helped each other, sometimes
watching from the doorway of a warm house
where candletips of new growth light the walls,
the city in likeness beyond, our hands
on the swollen damp branch or bud or cup.
Sometimes we are most ourselves when we are
least, or hurt, or lost, face over a face—.
You have, too. It's your secret, your delight.
You smell the wild scent all day on your hand.